Tag: State of The Blog

As we’ve done for several years, we thought we’d give a state of the blog summary for 2016. This year had some highs and a few lows. By a rough count, we sewed at least 44 skirts this year! And we sewed 14 Oliver + S patterns. Craftsy has changed the way they report information, but we know that many, many, many of our free skirt patterns were downloaded. This includes both the Dollhouse Skirt and The Pegasus Skirt.

One thing we got burnt out on this year was all the series we had going on! At 1 point we were trying to keep up with at least 9 different series mostly relating to skirts. So we’ve reassessed and some are going away completely, some will be semi-occasional instead of monthly, and we’ve also got a few new ideas up our sleeves.

Each of us have evaluated our goals and sewing endeavors from 2016 and have a little summary for you.

Audrey:

It turned out that 2016 was all about trying new things! To start the year, I stated 2 goals which were both new and terrifying to me! The first was to meet at least 3 sewing bloggers in person, and I made that goal by meeting 4 terrific ladies through the year! My 2nd goal was to sew something for Mr. Skirt Fixation, and although not one of them has been blogged, I sewed 12 garments for him!

The kind of design that really lit me up I found out is pattern design! And I’m really excited to have launched my 1st pattern (a skirt, of course) and set up the Savvy Patterns shop to go with it.

A highlight of the year was participating in Project Sew It and sewing up something for each of my 8 nieces and nephews for their birthdays.

I really love my work as a Virtual Assistant for Project Run & Play. It is so inspiring to be part of a very active sewing community.

Allegra:

Looking back over my goals from last year, I realized that my interests changed a lot over the course of a year! Last year I set the goals of sewing a softie, and making more handmade gifts for my family. I accomplished the handmade gift goal – at least a little, by putting more effort into homemade gifts for my family.

I didn’t complete the softie goal, which disappoints me, but I did do a lot of other crafting-related things. For instance, I learned wreath-making from a wonderful little lady, and made mom a new wreath. I think that the number of buttons I sewed on for mom this year make up for any discrepancies in the rest of my performance ;). Also, as part of my last year of 4-H, I won Grand Champion on my embroidery of this butterfly.

Aria:

Last year, I wanted to continue working on my quilt and make a softie. I did work on my quilt a little, but with a busy summer and then school, I haven’t had much time to do either.

However, I did make myself an entire outfit, and start on a softie! I haven’t finished it yet, but I’m sure I will eventually! I have sort of scrapped the quilt idea for now, owing to my busyness and the difficulty of making a hexagon quilt a first quilt, but I do have an idea for a different one!

Audrey:
I sewed 7 items of clothing for myself this year, not including maternity clothes. Those don’t count because I only wore those for a short period of time! It’s really hard to narrow it down to my favorite item, but I think the one I wear the most is my Jocole A-line Yoga skirt. Totally daytime pajamas! The thing that took me the most time to sew this year was the Cowboy Quilt. The items of clothing that took the most skill were the Marco Shirts.

Allegra:
The refashion that I liked the most this year was my khaki pencil skirt. I also enjoyed the ‘five ways’ posts that I did with it, and all of the figuring out different ways to wear it. My favorite thing that I made was probably the wardrobe for Sarah Bear.

I also love the orchestra dress that mom made for me, and so that would have to be my favorite item that has been made for me.

Aria:
This year I was really lucky, and I received a lot of things sewed for me. I really couldn’t decide what was my favorite thing that got sewed for me, but my Bimaa sweater and two jackets (here and here) that were made for me were definitely the most needed, so I like them a lot.

We are really wondering what YOUR favorite thing from the blog was this year. Google Analytics tells us that over half of our traffic was men between the ages of 25 and 34 coming in on the search word “mullet” which is another name for the hi-low skirt that we did several posts about. Sigh. That is most definitely not our target audience! The mullet gentlemen also left the blog within 10 seconds of arriving…

We also had the privilege of giving away 15 skirts and over $2080 worth of prizes from our fabulous sponsors! We could hardly believe it when we added it all up. What this means for our readers is: come back often…we’re always giving things away! And please tell all your friends and fellow seamstresses about Skirt Fixation. The reason we give so much stuff away is to help grow our blog, but the only way we will continue to be able to do this is if our blog grows and it is worthwhile for our sponsors to continue contributing more awesome prizes!! (Next giveaway is Friday…)

So tell us, what was your favorite thing on Skirt Fixation this year? (And come back tomorrow for a glimpse of what’s to come in 2015.)